Samsung RC512

Its still not working..hmm anything else? i found out that sleep works and touchpad disable works but it theres no icon that pops up when I disable touchpad which im sure it should.

 

I would next try to reinstall the latest display driver from Samsung. That may include some functions not in the GPU manufacturer's driver.

John

 

Thats what I actually did, I downloaded the file on the website and installed it. I can go into the options and such but nothing works.

 

Then try rolling back to the previous graphics driver: Perhaps Samsung forgot to add their own tweaks.

John

 

Best Buy has this computer on their website for $999. Obviously the battery life appears to suck and the screen resolution could be better. But, any other opinions and whether this is worth investigating further?

RC512

 

I have purchased this computer from BB and payed $1199 for it. (Luckily I had a $200 credit) as I was in the return window for it.

What I like about it is the processor in it as well as the weight of the notebook.
As has been said the keyboard should be backlit at this price and the screen resolution is 1366x768 which IMO should be 1600x900. Overall If it had those things it be a perfect notebook. Samsung should have done those 2 things and lowered the RAM to 4GB and put in a 500 GB HD to compromise.

Graphics are OK (I haven't had a chance to play with the NVidia card yet).
Heat really isn't a problem either.
The HD is a 5400 RPM which I plan to swap for a 7200RPM and up the RAM to 8GB for DDR3 functionality.

There is a setting in the BIOS for CPU power saving which is ON by default hurting performance be sure if you get this to turn it OFF.
Also it comes with your typical "bloat" that I blew off using a 7 disc that Microsoft (courtesy of Digital River) released and used the key on the bottom of the notebook to activate.

Let me know if you have other questions

 

Hello everyone
Thank you for all your posts , they have really helped me alot in picking a laptop.

I am between this Samsung and this other laptop:

Dell - XPS Laptop / Intel® Core™ i7 Processor / 15.6" Display / 6GB Memory / 640GB Hard Drive - Silver Anodized Aluminum - X15-1031AAL

Which one would you guys recommend?
thank you

 

I just got an Alienware M17x R3, so if your interested I'm selling my Samsung RC512, which I got at the end of March or whenever it was they were re-released after the recall for the chipset.
I believe brand new from BestBuy its $999 plus probably around $50 for tax, your looking at $1049.
I'm selling mine for $850 or OBO.
nothing wrong with it, just got my Alienware M17x R3 and no use for the samsung, which by the way is an awesome laptop and never had a problem with it.
PM me if your interested

 

Hi, I just bought samsung rc 512-s02 and i have a problem with my graphic card. I think that it wont switch to my nvidia 525m,but it keeps using the integrated intel graphics. I can play games only on low details,and for example when i start pes2011 it show me a message saying:
warning:
your computer does not meet the minimum system requirements to run this software!
As a result you may experience errors during operation.
Your video card does not meet the required specification. (GPU:Vram 128mb)
I replaced the laptop and got a new one but I still have the same problem.

 

Hate to dredge up an old thread but I purchased a RC512-S02 from Best Buy and it was also manufactured at the end of February and I am not quite so sure if they corrected the chipset defect or not. I tried several methods of testing and all show it to be a B2 stepping which is the defective chipset.

Samsung tech support is the most useless bunch I have ever dealt with. They are friendly but all they give me is a script type answer of please send your unit back for service or exchange it for a another unit at the point of purchase.

Does anybody here have a later model that could confirm the Chipset stepping? Since it only affects certain SATA ports it may be a non issue depending on what ports Samsung actually uses to access the optical drive and the HDD. If the only use the SATA III 6gb ports it shouldn't be a problem.

I like the machine a lot, but the extremely poor support is a issue.

 

i have a late model bought in july. tell me how to figure it out chipset stepping and il tell you mine.

 

I used this method here:

How to Find Out If Your Sandy Bridge Motherboard Is Affected by Intel's SATA Bug - Softpedia


On the bottom mine has a date of Feb. 2011 after the serial number.

 

i dont understand that link.. sorry

 

What is the date of your unit? My date is located directly after the serial number on the bottom of my unit.

To check the chipset and if you have WIN 7 you will see in the bottom right corner a search box, type cmd.exe and a DOS windows opens. Then cut an paste the command line (wmic idecontroller get deviceid) from the article and hit enter. Look for the number after REV_ in the string of characters you get.

BTW what is the rating on your AC adapter supplied with your unit. Is it 19v at 4.74 amps? I think I have the wrong adapter for my unit as it is only rated at 19v at 3.1 amps

 

That procedure tells me that my Lenovo T420s is Rev_04 and is therefore affected. However, I don't believe that it is - the computer was shipped to me direct from the factory in late April 2011.

See here (just before then end) about checking for the affected chipset causes false positives. Any notebook shipped from April onwards should not include the defective chip: Production of affected notebooks stopped in early February once the bug had been identified and did not resume until about the beginning of April.

John

 

Hi John,

What worries me is that mine has a Feb 2011 date of manufacture. Intel cliams to have started shipping the new chips as of Feb 14th.

 

Thanks. I can see the problem for both you and Samsung. The only way to be sure is to strip down the computer, take the heatsink off the chipset and check the markings. Intel weren't very clever in not ensuring that the fixed chipset reported a different stepping. Did Best Buy claim that the computer was new or refurbished? If the latter then it could well be stock that had the mainboard changed.

John

 

ignore the pic on the left, pic on the right is mine.
friend and i was comparing pics

does this have any info you could use on it?

 

here you go.
do i havea good one or no?. kind of curious to.

 

): i found out mine is effected, i called samsung, there fixing it or sending me a new pc claims are open tomorrow, takled to CSR
he told me they probably will sendme a newer version of this laptop (comparable) so he said since it is half a year old, probably better version.
STOKED.
granted, i love my pc, and ive had NO issues with it.. >.>better safe thans orry, what sucks is. i have ALL my data on this.. sigh.. what to do

 

Sorry to hear you have the problem also. Are you here in the US? I haven't had much luck with customer service here. I may call tomorrow and see what happens.

I guess you are going to have to ship the computer to Samsung first and then they will decide what to do from there.

Thanks for your effort.

 

Copy the HDD or, better still clone it. You should have a backup system in place anyway.

John

 

We'll find out when time comes, its whatever. i havnt had a single issue with my laptop, even if i kept it id be happy regaurdless. i love it

once they call me and we talk about it, going to ask them exactly whats going to happen, if its to much hassle im going to keep my laptop. if its worth while il send it out or whatever.

 

You may not notice any issues at first, but if your machine in like mine the Hard drive is on port 0 which is not affected. But the Blu ray is on port 2 which is an affected port.

According to what I have read on the Intel site and others, your SATA transfers will gradually go downhill until it dies. On good side they say only 5 to 15% may actually develop a problem.

 

ok the chic today blew me off, not in a good way, the guy yesterday said he was aware of the issue etc, today a new girl talked to me, *there is no issue with your laptop* *we dont have any recalls for that model* such bs i was like, well its a well known recall, shes like if its not in our system, its not being recalled. goodbye.
im like SERIOUS?


by my serial number it says APRIL
so does that mean i am safe?

 

hey dude my date says april too, if you find the answer to that get back at me D: this is freaking me out

 

Same deal with them here. I would think by April you would have been safe.

Here is the reply:

Thank you for providing me your serial number. In reviewing your case, between a certain time period and your purchase date fall outside of that. Per the website, Intel estimates only a small percentage of all the 6 Series chipsets could be affected, but Samsung's offers apply to all units of these models manufactured January 2011. Your computer was not affected nor manufactured between those dates according to the information on our Website. More information can be found on Intel’s web site (wwww.intel.com).

Please let us know if you have any questions.


Kind regards,



Here is another email I received from another CSR

Thank you for contacting Samsung Electronics.

We understand that you want to know about the procedure to get the notebook replaced for the Intel Chipset issue.

We are really sorry about this.

We would like to inform you that the notebook model NP-RC512-S01US does not come under the manufacture duration provided for the Intel Chipset issue.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to contact us.

Thank you.

Samsung Online Support.

 

they were nice to you, she hung up on me, not joking at all. such bs. the other dude, named Adam ROCKED, had him 2 days in a row, prior marine guy, tried his best to take care of me, the who finished my order told me to screw off pretty much

adam FTW
chic FTMF-LOSS

 

Ok I've had my rc512 since may and have no issues. Last night fast start told me it had been 7 days since my last restart so i hit restart. Everything seemed to come up ok but i get 30-45 seconds lag after hitting a key. I brought up tune-up utilities to look for registry errors, it scanned fine but hung on fixing (there were only 2 errors). Also I use a screen reader to operate the pc and it seems really flakey sometimes talking other times not. Finally I seem to always have a screen up called samsung ?something? secc, I can't read the screen and can't get rid of it with alt-f4. Any suggestions? Thanks in advance!

 

when i went to register my rc512, it said it was manufactored in February but the original owner got it in late April...

Am I part of the group with the chipset problem? I dont have the original receipt but I have SKU and what not (and warranty)

 

Samsung claims that a February unit is not affected, but I tend to disagree. So far I have had no luck with anyone at Samsung about this matter.

I am either going to return it to Best Buy or just take a chance it does not have a premature failure of the SATA port.

I really like this computer, but this issue has me concerned about the longevity of it.

 

I remember reading somewhere on this forum that if its the S02 model then its the fixed one? What makes you think its not fixed, if you dont mind me asking, maybe I have the same symptons.

And do you need the actual receipt for the return? I mean I bought mine from someone else but I have the actual SKU and its under warranty

 

After reading all the documents at Intel’s website, it makes me wonder how a unit which was manufactured on Feb 28 of 2011 could have had the defective chipset replaced. The Intel documents make reference to the new chips with the B3 stepping starting to ship at the end of February, which in my opinion would not have been enough time for whatever OEM builds the motherboards for this product to have gotten a replacement in the supply chain. Most other manufacturers are quoting around April before the problem is resolved.

I have tried several programs to read the chipset stepping and all give me a version of B2. Now with that said sometimes this may not be accurate.

But I did find a test on the Lenovo or it may have been a HP forum that showed how to get a pretty definite answer and it shows I have B2 stepping.

Which may not have been a big issue if my optical drive and hard drive used only ports 0 and 1 which are unaffected by this issue. but my unit has the HD on port 0 and the Blu ray on port 2.

Now if Samsung could reassign the Blu Ray to port 1 on later units this whole thing will be a non issue as the affected ports 2 -5 will not be used.

Unfortunately Samsung information is hard to find, I spent many hours with google reading various forums about the issue.

Here is an article with a link to the utility:

Gigabyte releases Sandy Bridge fault checker | bit-tech.net


Or download direct form here, the 6 Series SATA check file:

GIGABYTE - Support & Downloads - Utility - Motherboard

 

Sandy Bridge - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

it says that new chips started SHIPPING on Feb 14, that leaves a 14 day window for samsung to implement those chips into our laptops.

Not sure how reliable it is but hey, I mean =/

is there anything we can do about this (via samsung warranty?)

 

I don't know of much we can do unless the affected SATA port does die or we find a sympathetic CSR at Samsung.

Of course it may never fail, but I hate to know that I could be facing a giant repair bill for a fairly new computer.

Mine was the display unit from a Best Buy, so it has lots of run time already on it. It had been on display since March and I imagine it was powered up most of the time it was on display. But I have a year warranty, so I hope it does at least die in warranty.

Best Buy and some others are selling RC512-S02 refurbished units, I wonder if these units have been upgraded?

 

I was having a long talk with samsung and they said that they only applied to the january units (2011) and the new intel sandy bridge started shipping out from intel on the 14th of Feb.

My s02 unit (pretty sure all, not sure) was manufactured on the 28th of February (according to samsung product registration site )

I mean it kinda makes sense but on the off chance the BD drive/HDD fails my warranty has an additional 3 months for registering the product.


Edit: what I dont get it is that it still says B2....the revised units say B3.
maybe samsung is lying.

I dont know.

 

completely offtopic but

how durable are RC512's?

always wondered that

 

I am sure it may have been possible, but to to me it seems doubtful since all the tests come up with a B2 stepping.

I still don't see how Intel could get the chipsets to manufacturer of the motherboard so quickly.

They would have had to express ship a ton of chips to the motherboard manufacturer and then express ship the motherboards to a Samsung assembly plant in 14 days. Sounds expensive if it was on a large scale.

The only way to be 100% sure would be to open the machine up and get the info off the chip, which I am not willing to do at the moment due the warranty.

 

I think intel lost a billion dollars cause of this faulty chipset.

What are the symptons of SATA errors?

 

Hi guys, I've got more info on my trouble with my rc512. The screen that seems to be making the system hang is " samsung smart restart secc". Any idea how to get rid of this screen? Thanks!

 

fortunately for me, i had wifi issues when i first got it, but updated drivers fixed all my issues.
i've never experienced some of the ones im reading about. sorry techno. probably just a bad driver that needs updated or rolled back. thats how my wifi was. was horrible experience.

 

Can anyone post their CPU-Z graphics tab specs for the Nvidia GT 525m?
For some reason my clock speeds ( for core and shader ) are nowhere near the ones posted on notebookcheck..

Im wondering if anyone else is having these issues...maybe its being throttled down?

 

your i7 downclocks or overclocks depending on the *needed* usage.
if you arent needing full load, then your pc wont do it.

 

err wasnt referring to i7 at all lol..I know how turbo boost works haha



was asking about the 525m speeds. Its showing speeds thats comparable to 335m which is a significant throttle down. Not sure if its reading right or not...

 

ah. i dunno.let me open mine.

 

mine only shows hd 3000 on my cpu z and iturned on gt525m through nvidial control panel..

but.. xD i dont game so i dont care.
but i do heavy multitasking

 

Hi Sorrownightshade, I don't think its a driver issue since samsung update+ has run lots of times and shows no updates. I do think it has something to do with wifi though, in between restarting my rc512 i lost my internet access. Since then i reset my router and got it back but the samsung shows not connected and i can't get rid of that stupid samsung smart restart secc screen. Tonight I'll try to see if i can kill that screen through task manager. Thanks!

 

for CPU-Z to show the 525m, you need something to tap into its power (in my case its BF3 Beta) and then ill alt-tab and run cpu-z and it will the 525m...

with significantly lowered speeds >_> (even when i check the 3D application tab)

 

http://forum.notebookreview.com/gam...-cards/616537-525m-throttled-down-shrugs.html

made a thread in the graphics card section; this is what i mean sorrownightshade.

 

this pc does it when im at my friends house, the router/ and this pc will dc nonstop and it wont recognize wifi until you restart pc.

ONLY his house, everywhere else in the world ive never had a single drop or issue with wifi, im talking about this model to. its really annoying to go to his house, i researched etc, if you look at my prior threads you'll see the issues i had. but it was incompatability between router/ pc

also, i went in and disabled the WIMAX driver in device manager, disabled it, due to fact i dont need it. and it helped to some i think?. dunno